The broadcast of size

About a year ago, I mentioned picking up a cheap Bob Hope box set with a whole bunch of movies I hadn't blogged about before. Recently, I got it back out and put the DVD containing The Big Broadcast of 1938 in the DVD player since I hadn't mentioned a Bob Hope movie in several months.

This was Hope's first feature film, although he had made half a dozen shorts, so he's technically not the star here, although he shows up right at the beginning of the movie. He's Buzz Fielding, a radio announcer who is supposed to be on the S.S. Gigantic, which is going on a transatlantic boat race with the S.S. Colossal, the former having a new radio-powered propeller. But Buzz is currently in jail, because he's got three ex-wives: Cleo (Shirley Ross), Grace (Grace Bradley), and Joan (Dorothy Howe), who are all looking for their alimony. He's also got a fiancée in Dorothy Wyndham (Dorothy Lamour), who bails him out by hocking the engagement ring. Of course, that ring isn't paid for. And Buzz has a $50,000 bet on the Gigantic winning the race.

As for the nominal star of the movie, that's W.C. Fields, playing two characters. T. Frothinghill Bellows owns the Gigantic, and has a brother S.B., also played by Fields. Frothinghill wants his brother to be on the Colossal, as S.B. has a reputation for extremely bad luck, and putting him on the competing ship means it a certainty Bellows' ship will win the race. However, after a golfing scene that has nothing to do with the plot, such as it is, S.B. flies off and lands on the Gigantic.

Buzz and his ex-wives all wind up on the ship, as does Dorothy, along with S.B.'s daughter Martha (Martha Raye, who already has her big mouth in the opening credits). Bob Hayes (Leif Erickson) is the engineer behind the radio propeller, which he may or may not be able to use for various reasons.

But the real point of the movie is for a series of variety numbers. First up is bandleader Shep Fields, whose shtick was "rippling rhythm", whatever that was; he conducts a song with an animated backdrop of an anthropomorphic drop of water. There's a male Mexican singer, and a female opera singer who does Wagner. Some of the stars also get to sing, most notably Hope and Ross doing "Thanks for the Memories", which of course would become Hope's signature song. Fields gets to do a couple more routines.

The Big Broadcast of 1938 was the third (I think) movie Paramount released in the Big Broadcast series, and wasn't really meant to be watched for the plot, more for the musical interludes and comic sequences, making me think of Hollywood Party. I have to admit that I wasn't a huge fan of the variety numbers, and Fields was relatively irritating here. Why, for example, would he stop to play golf (and be obnoxious to everybody around him) instead of getting on the ship? Surely his brother would have made certain he got on the right ship. The movie also ends rather abruptly, as if the writers didn't know how to come up with a real resolution.

Some people may like the variety numbers, as well as Fields' comedy, more than I do. Those people will probably like The Big Broadcast of 1938. For the rest of us, it's more of a time capsule of what audiences might have wanted back in 1938.